South Asia Terrorism Portal
Gwadar: Balochistan's Achilles heal Tushar Ranjan Mohanty Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management
On November 3, 2023, at least 14 Army soldiers were killed after two vehicles belonging to Security Forces (SFs) were ambushed by terrorists in the Pasni area of Gwadar District in Balochistan. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the vehicles were moving from Pasni to Ormara when they were ambushed. Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) claimed responsibility for the attack.
On August 13, eleven SF personnel and four Chinese nationals were killed when a Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) suicide bomber attacked a convoy of vehicles belonging to Chinese engineers and SFs, near the Faqir Colony Bridge in Gwadar city. BLA 'spokesman' Jeeyand Baloch issued a statement claiming that BLA's Majeed Brigade was behind the attack. The statement also conveyed a clear message to China, emphasizing that Balochistan was an "occupied territory" and voicing BLA's opposition to Beijing's projects, including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in the region.
The BLA statement read,
Ending on a firm note, the BLA has issued China a 90-day ultimatum to withdraw from Balochistan, or prepare for intensified attacks on its "key interests" in the region.
On February 22, 2023, five Frontier Corps (FC) personnel were killed and another two sustained injuries when BLA cadres ambushed a FC convoy with a remote-control bomb on the main highway to Gwadar in the Panwan area of Jiwani in Gwadar District. BLA ‘spokesman’ Azad Baloch claimed responsibility for the attack, adding, "Our such attacks will continue till the independence of occupied Balochistan."
On February 3, 2023, four Pakistan Coast Guard (PCG) personnel were killed and another five were injured when BLA cadres attacked a patrol with a remote-controlled bomb and firing with automatic weapons in the Jeemuri area of Gwadar District. Azad Baloch claimed responsibility for the attack and said that the BLA cadres targeted the PCG team when they were on their way to the Lighthouse camp after picking up their remaining personnel on patrol from the seaside.
According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), Gwadar District has recorded at least 41 terrorism-related fatalities (34 SF personnel, four civilians and three terrorists) in 2023, thus far (data till November 5, 2023). During the corresponding period of 2022, the District had registered nine terrorism-related fatalities (eight SF personnel and one terrorist). During the corresponding period of 2021, there were nine such fatalities (four civilians, four SF personnel and one terrorist. The fatalities during the current year have crossed all the record of previous years, including the preceding high of 33 fatalities in 2013.
Militancy-related Fatalities in Gwadar: 2000*-2023**
Year
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
Total
The district has recorded a total of 266 fatalities in 74 attacks since March 6, 2000, out of which 30 incidents were major attacks (each involving three or more fatalities) resulting in 172 deaths (90 civilians, 57 SF personnel, 19 militants and six in the 'not specified' (NS) category. Some of the prominent attacks included:
Gwadar port in Gwadar District enjoys a strategic location on the Arabian Sea in Balochistan, providing access to South Asia, West Asia and Central Asia. Due to its strategic location, it is the epicentre of China’s CPEC projects. Major projects for Gwadar Port include a coal-fired power plant, expansion of existing railway lines, the Pak-China Friendship Hospital, Gwadar University and Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Though an effort is being made to transform what was once a sleepy fishing town into a vibrant trade hub, with a pledged investment close to USD 700 million, the pace of development is slow, and business even slower. More worryingly, the interests and concerns of locals have been ignored. While the city is growing with the local development projects, the local people remain alienated as most of the projects are managed by the Chinese or officers from other provinces of Pakistan. Meanwhile, Gwadar’s common people remain deprived of access to basic amenities, including clean water.
Due to rising discontentment, the insurgency in the region is escalating, as is reflected in increasing insurgency-linked fatalities. Baloch groups have intensified attacks targeting Chinese nationals engaged in economic activities, as well as SF personnel.
At the same time, a series of protests have started against Chinese projects and interests in the region, under the banner of the Haq Do Tehreek (Give our Rights Movement), led by Maulana Hidayat ur Rehman, who is also the general secretary of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Balochistan. The protesters started a sit-in in Gwadar on October 27, 2022, demanding an end to illegal trawling, a major issue for the people of the port city, for whom fishing is one of the very few available sources of income. The Government had licensed Chinese trawlers to fish in the waters off the coast, and locals, with their small boats, were unable to compete with their better equipped Chinese competitors. The Chinese trawlers are also accused of over-exploitation, beyond licenced quotas.
As the sit-in continued, tens of thousands of protesters, including women and children, blocked an expressway leading to the Gwadar Port, when the Government failed to meet their deadline to act on their demands. On December 10, 2022, thousands of women rallied in Gwadar in support of Rehman and the Haq do Tehreek. As tension continued to build, Rehman issued a warning to Chinese nationals working in Gwadar Port to leave, vowing to completely stop work on all CPEC projects in Gwadar. Things turned violent on December 27, 2022, a day after negotiations between the Government and movement leaders failed. The Police clashed with protesters, in which one Policeman was killed while hundreds of protesters and many Policemen were injured. A number of protesters were taken into custody. After evading the Police for about two weeks, Haq Do Tehreek leader Maulana Hidayat ur Rehman was arrested on January 13, 2023, from the court where he had arrived to surrender, along with two other activists, Nasibullah Nusherwani and Hassan Murad. On May 18, 2023, the Supreme Court of Pakistan granted bail to Maulana Hidayat Ur Rehman and ordered his release. The movement, however, stalled, for the time being.
Meanwhile, instead of addressing the legitimate grievances of the protesters, the Government remains committed to protecting Chinese interests. On February 12, 2023, Federal Minister of Interior Rana Sanaullah announced that ‘fool proof security’ would be provided to Chinese nationals in Gwadar Port.
Unless the Pakistani State understands the core of Baloch frustration, Baloch groups will continue their sabotage activities.
Collapse of Human Rights Sanchita Bhattacharya Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management
On October 31, 2023, Taliban cadres detained and assaulted three civilians – Wasi, Idris, and Danish – during a seven-hour captivity in the Dara District of Panjsher Province.
On October 27, 2023, an unnamed civilian was killed after being detained by the Taliban in one of its detention centres in Security Zone 14 of Kandahar Province.
On October 25, 2023, four civilians were shot dead by the Taliban, following a verbal altercation at a Taliban checkpoint in the Sarulaman area of Kabul city, Kabul Province.
On October 21, 2023, Taliban publicly flogged a man and a woman on charges of adultery in the Shibar District of Bamyan Province. Their flogging was announced by the Taliban's Supreme Court.
On October 15, 2023, a young social activist, Matiullah Fathzada, succumbed to torture while in a Taliban Prison in Kabul city. He had been arrested a year and a half earlier, for sharing images of the National Resistance Front (NRF) on his Facebook profile.
Since its return to power on August 15, 2021, the Taliban regime has continued with the enforcement of several harsh regulations and edicts on the common Afghan populace. Inflicting severe Human Rights abuses, the regime has implemented not only an anti-woman, but also an anti-media, anti-press, anti-free speech, anti-public education, and anti-health care providers, agenda. The religious and ethnic minorities of the country are also under constant threat. The regime persecutes dissidents, and has forced the dissolution of civil society organizations in the war-torn country.
According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)’s report titled, “A barrier to securing peace: Human rights violations against former government officials and former armed force members in Afghanistan: 15 August 2021 – 30 June 2023”, between August 15, 2021 and June 30, 2023, the country’s de facto authorities were responsible for 218 extrajudicial killings, 14 enforced disappearances, over 144 instances of torture and ill treatment, and 424 arbitrary arrests and detentions. According to partial data collated by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), since July 1, 2023, the Taliban has been responsible for at least 21 extrajudicial killings, five enforced disappearances, over 65 instances of torture and ill treatment, and 147 arbitrary arrests and detentions (data till November 5, 2023).
Additionally, on September 20, 2023, UNAMA reported that, between January 2022 and the end of July 2023, it had documented more than 1,600 cases of human rights violations against Afghans, including the deaths of 18 people in custody, acts of torture, and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment by the Taliban during arrests and detentions.
The latest, "2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Afghanistan", published by the United States (US) Department of State observed:
Indeed, Taliban authorities carried out extensive censorship and violence against Afghan media, one of their foremost targets. According to partial data collated by Institute for Conflict Management (ICM), since August 15, 2021, 25 journalists (data till November 5, 2023) have been arrested by the Taliban. The US 2022 Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Afghanistan, adds that, since August 2021, Taliban had detained at least 80 journalists for varying lengths of time, and more than 7,000 journalists became unemployed, most of them women. According to Human Rights Watch, hundreds of media outlets were closed and an estimated 80 per cent of women journalists across Afghanistan lost their jobs or left the profession after the Taliban takeover in August 2021. In its report, titled, "Two Years of Journalism under the Taliban Regime," Reporters Without Borders (RSF) stated that, according to the Afghan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA), more than half of the 547 media outlets established by 2021 had subsequently vanished. On March 7, 2022, the regime also banned outlets in Afghanistan from broadcasting international news programs, including Voice of America and the BBC, in Dari, Pashto, and Uzbek languages. Several journalists and bloggers were beaten and arrested for trying to report on anti-Taliban protests and random detention.
As expected, the Taliban announced in 2021, that it would review subjects to be taught in various educational institutions, to ensure compliance with the Taliban’s interpretation of Sharia, while also pledging to not change the curriculum of madrassas (Islamic seminaries). The specific proposals of the regime comprised removing images of all living beings, promulgating Jihad, opposition to women’s education and freedom, and propagating the Taliban’s narrative of history that focuses on the Islamic world and largely ignores non-Islamic history. As reported on October 27, 2023, Taliban officials issued alarming threats to teachers, specifying that teachers with short beards and without turbans may face dismissal in Sar-e-Pul Province. The Taliban’s Education Directorate said that approximately 200 teachers and staff members had been warned. Earlier, as reported in December, 2022, the Taliban’s ‘modification’ of school curricula included the removal of ancient and revered Afghan cultural traditions, ranging from the Attan dance and Nawruz, to indigenous musical instruments and colorful women’s traditional dresses, all of which were to be stripped from textbooks. Another tradition that bears mention, to explain the shameful excesses of the regime, includes the directive to teachers emphasize the “ugliness” of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, and celebrate the Taliban’s destruction of such idols. Politicizing the public education system to the point where it practically becomes an adjunct of the Taliban's militant wing, producing young people trained in the Taliban's specifically anti-humanist worldview, is an unconcealed horror.
The situation in the health sector is also bleak. On August 17, 2023, just over two years to the day after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that it could no longer afford to manage 25 public hospitals in the country and would stop supporting them. Besides, on August 19, 2023, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) claimed that 38 humanitarian workers had been killed during the past two years, many of whom were polio vaccinators. Hundreds of health facilities have been shuttered in Afghanistan since the Taliban toppled the internationally recognized government in Kabul. Earlier, Abdul Bari Omari, the Taliban's Deputy Director of Public Health, disclosed in October, 2021, that nearly 90 per cent of the sector was dependent on foreign aid, which led to the closure of 2,300 health centers when that aid was cut off. As expected, the Taliban has not demonstrated a commitment to the broader population’s health in any extensive way. As reported on October 11, 2023, in their 2022 budget, a meager 2.4 per cent was allocated to health, as against almost 40 per cent to security and the military.
As reported on September 19, 2023, the mental health of Afghan women, who have suffered heavily under this inhuman regime, has deteriorated across the country. Nearly 70 per cent reported feelings of anxiety and isolation, and depression had grown significantly worse between April and June of 2023. The women in the country are suffering from psychological problems including fear, anxiety, depression, insomnia, suicidal thoughts, loss of hope and motivation, aggression, and increasingly isolationist behaviour.
The Taliban have barred women from most areas of public life and work and banned girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade. They have prohibited Afghan women from working in local and non-governmental organizations. The ban was extended to female employees of the UN in April, 2023. On June 25, 2023, in an Eid-ul-Adha message, the Taliban’s ‘supreme leader’, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, declared that necessary steps had been taken for the ‘betterment of women’, as half of society, and steps had been taken to provide women with a "comfortable and prosperous life according to Islamic Sharia.” The reality for a common Afghan woman, however, is far from such hollow statements.
The Hazaras in Afghanistan suffer from a double persecution, first on the grounds of ethnic differences with the majority Pashtun tribes, and second, because they follow the Shia sect of Islam in a Sunni majority country. Their distinct facial features make them easy prey for Sunni hardliners, both Taliban and the Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISKP), who consider them ‘apostates’ and ‘infidels’. According to partial data collated by SATP, since August 15, 2021, 101 Hazaras have been killed and 158 injured in five incidents (data till November 5, 2023). On September 23, 2023, the National Resistance Council for the Salvation of Afghanistan asserted that the Taliban had been responsible for the deaths of 17 Hazara residents in the preceding two years. Apart from direct acts of brutality, the Taliban regime has imposed various restrictions on the Shias’ and Hazaras’ freedom of religion and belief. As reported on August 4, 2023, Taliban sanctions on the Shias and Hazaras included:
Unsurprisingly, according to the Global Peace Index 2023, Afghanistan was designated the least peaceful country in the world for the eighth consecutive year, ranking at the bottom of 163 countries. Similarly, according to the Global Gender Gap Report, 2023, Afghanistan has ranked at the bottom of 146 countries listed. In addition, in Global Terrorism Index, 2023, Afghanistan remained the country most impacted by terrorism for the fourth consecutive year, ‘achieving’ first rank in the list. These various global indexes further expose the severe Human Rights situation in the country under the Taliban regime.
The Taliban regime will not stop, it will keep on pushing the Afghan society and people into the dungeons of violence, ignorance, brutality, and poverty. The obsession with establishing their interpretation of Sharia-based law and a puritan society has completely undone the little progress made by Afghanistan over the two decades preceding the Taliban’s return to power. In its present avatar, the Taliban is more deadly and more organised to impose its will, at the cost of common Afghans.
Weekly Fatalities: Major Conflicts in South Asia October 30 - November 5, 2023
Civilians
Security Force Personnel
NS
AFGHANISTAN
INDIA
Chhattisgarh
Jammu and Kashmir
Madhya Pradesh
Manipur
INDIA (Total)
PAKISTAN
Balochistan
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Punjab
PAKISTAN (Total)
Total (South Asia)
Representatives from eight countries and EU voice concerns about Human Rights in Afghanistan: On October 31, representatives and special envoys from Canada, the European Union (EU), France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US) voiced their concern about the human rights situation in Afghanistan in a joint statement, calling for the lifting of restrictions, including women's education and employment bans, after concluding a meeting in Rome. They said that 29 million people in Afghanistan urgently need assistance. The Khaama Press News Agency, November 2, 2023.
'Khalistan Referendum' in British Columbia Province of Canada gets marked by 'Low voter Turnout': The 'Khalistan Referendum' on October 29 organized by Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) and held at Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey Town in the British Columbia Province of Canada, was officially declared a failure. The voter turnout was disappointingly low, with only around 2,000 participants, consisting mostly of students, the report said. News 18, October 30, 2023.
SFJ offers reward for Indian envoy's arrest and releases map with Delhi as part of Khalistan, says report: In the second phase of the 'Khalistan Referendum' on October 29, the Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) group announced a USD 100,000 reward for the arrest of the Indian High Commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma. The group also released a new map, expanding the boundaries of Khalistan to include Delhi. Punjab News Express, October 30, 2023.
14 Army soldiers killed in terrorist ambush in Balochistan: Fourteen Army soldiers were killed after two vehicles belonging to Security Forces were ambushed by terrorists in Pasni area of Gwadar District in Balochistan. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the vehicles were moving from Pasni to Ormara when they were ambushed. Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) claimed responsibility for the attack. Dawn, November 4, 2023.
Nine terrorists killed as attack on training air base in Mianwali of Punjab neutralised: Nine terrorists were killed as the Security Forces (SFs) in the early hours of November 4 neutralised a terrorist attack on the Mianwali Training Air Base of the Pakistan Air Force in Mianwali (Mianwali District) of Punjab. The Tehreek-i-Jihad Pakistan (TJP), a newly emerged militant group that is an affiliate of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility of the attack. Dawn, November 4, 2023.
PEMRA directive prohibits TV channels of airing statements of banned outfits: The electronic media regulator body, Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) on November 3 issued a directive to all satellite-based news, current affairs and regional channels prohibiting airing of statements of proscribed organisations or their representatives or members for the upcoming General Elections scheduled to be held on February 8, 2024. However, it added, such statements were allowed only if they were in the larger public interest for exposing ideology, abuse of religion or barbarianism by such entities. Dawn, November 4, 2023.
The South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) is a weekly service that brings you regular data, assessments and news briefs on terrorism, insurgencies and sub-conventional warfare, on counter-terrorism responses and policies, as well as on related economic, political, and social issues, in the South Asian region.
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